Swinburne Night 2007

Warning! Extremely long post!

The long-awaited night is finally over!

What's the outcome of the night? Well, you'll just have to wait till the end of the post yea? Or, for you impatient dudeys, you can always scroll straight to the end of this post! Or just click here.

The story begins at Johnson's... At 5pm, a few of us gathered at Johnson's place before leaving for Swinburne. As usual, there was much last minute making-up, doing hair and endless insults flying around. Highlight of that time was the sight of Soon Eng trying to spike up his super long hair, making him look a bit like someone fresh off the electric chair. What a shame I did not manage to take a photo of that moment! In the end, the Digi Antenna Wui Jie helped him do his hair. He settled for a slightly-more-stylized version of his normal hairstlye.

After Irene arrived, we had a mini practice and a group prayer before leaving for Swinburne.


Side story! Those not interested can skip this paragraph. Johnson's drumsticks broke during the morning's practice. He was trying to steal the show by playing super hard and drown the others. So, we made a side trip to Les Paul (3rd Mile) before going to Swinburne. Over there, while Johnson was meticulously choosing his ideal drumstick, we witnessed something shocking. Snatch thief! We heard a loud scream and we rushed quickly to the glass door just to see a motorcycle speeding away and a woman in her 40s running after the motorcycle. Nothing we could do or say. We were speechless. The tauke puts it best: "Mai ku liu."

Arriving at Swinburne, we were met by a bunch of Anime Club members in costumes. I must say, the costumes are pretty amazing! I managed to take a photo of Billy Ichigo and his cardboard Zangetsu. We'll see more of this bunch later.

Kurosaki Ichigo from Bleach

Entered the auditorium after that. Had our tickets snipped for the lucky draws for the night. Sad to say that I didn't win any lucky draws that night. Jacq managed to bag herself a huge hamper, though. Lucky girl.

Ticket ladies! That's Adeline and Shu Chan

Entering the auditorium, we were in for a surprise. It certainly looks different from the auditorium we slept studied in during classes! Colorful clothing and balloons were everywhere, jiwang music was in the air and everything has a cheerful mood to it. Why can't it be like this during lectures??

The emcee came on. And the mood plunged three notches. Why? Well, let me put it this way. When he said, "Wow, I am so excited for tonight! Aren't you guys excited?" he might have just said "I hate my job." Yea. Very the monotonous. Thank God he's got Irene to cover up his act.

The night started with a small game. Mr. Eko was the game master, and the first game was that we must sit at tables with a balloon of the same color as our ticket. So that's why the tickets are printed differently. Huh~ Looks like it was pointless for us to book tables in the first place. Eric, Avery, Johnson, Soon Eng, Chun Haw (is that how you spell his name?) and I ended up on the same table. Got geng lar so that wasn't so bad. Hehe... Oh and we won some sushi because our table was among the first to be filled. Don't see much point in this, but I get yummy sushi, so I am not complaining.

The second game involved looking for a white piece of paper under our chairs. Malas want to explain about this game. Nothing much to say. Just that in the end, Eric, Jacq, Jason, Ah Yieng, Shao Wee and Esther won prizes for this game.

Dinner ensues. Nyam nyam! Pretty standard eat-all-you-can affair. The fried rice was pretty good, though. My ravenousness made me forgot to take pictures of the food! Aiks.

Now comes the performances! First up was by guest performers Hazard Minor and their shuffle battles. If I am not mistaken, Hazard Minor is a pretty famous (?) group in Kuching's shuffle scene. So I guess it can be considered a priviledge to have them performing. In my view, however, anything good that gets overplayed turns stale after a while. Same case here. They're cool, but they pretty much do the same thing at every Swinburne event. Thus, their performance didn't really catch my attention.

Second performance was Cosplay by the Anime & Manga Club. Remember them? They're the bunch of costume people I talked about earlier. Again, I am impressed by their costumes, especially the characters Rin and Cloud. Take a look at Cloud! I wonder how long he took to style his hair. Oh and they received RM50 for their efforts ;)
Here are some pictures:

Real life cartoon characters

Hitsugaya Taichou from Bleach

Cloud from Final Fantasy. I loved this costume

Next two performances are seriously good. First is Fara singing acoustic renditions of Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" and Kelly Clarkson's "Behind These Hazel Eyes", with Dale as her guitarist. As expected, Fara gave a breathtaking performance. Her voice was just heavenly. And the performance after hers was equally good, if not better: Alda singing Gil's "It's Your Love". That guy really can sing.

Fara in sillohuette

Alda belting out the music

Then comes the nominations of Swin Prince and Swin Princess. A slow dance session was done to eliminate some contestants until five pairs are left. Eric and Jacq was among them! Then, the girl had to make-up the guys. Here are some pictures!

Cute expression. Haha!

Then, the guys get their revenge. They have to use toilet paper to rape wrap up the girls into mummies. No offense, Eric, but your wrapping skills sucked. Hahaha...

What kinda mummy is that? Sucky wrapping skills

From those two activities, the audience were supposed to 'judge' which pair is the pair to be nominated Swin Prince and Princess. Hmm. I don't see how making up and making mummies has anything to do with Princes and Princesses. Do princes and princesses do this? Great Honorable Agong, if you're reading, can you tell me if you're sons and daughters do this??

At least this one resembles a mummy

Moving on!

By this time, Avery's whining about how he can't perform and complaining that everything's moving too quickly. But he's just being wussy. Just kidding, Avery! =P

The next performance is by a group called 'Blank' (coincidentally similar to Avery's online nickname). They've got good musicians, but... Their singer is the problem. He sang very throatily, a little bit off timing and even sang in the wrong key! After them is a group called 'House of Flies' (Rumah Lalat?). We had the luck of watching their rehersal that afternoon, and I was impressed by their skills then. But during the actual performance.. Well, they still had cool effects and rather impressive music, but all I could hear them sing was something that goes like "AAAaaaaaaaa~!". Reminded me of Johnson magpies.

White noise =P

Guess who's next?

"Ladies and gentlemen, here's the last group that will be competing for tonight's prize of RM150. And I believe my partner is also performing. Let us welcome SILENT MODE!"

Yeah, that's the name we settled for. Silent Mode. It means... uhr. I don't know. Silence? Haha...

But the performance almost ended before it even began. We had three guitars - one semi acoustic, one electric and one bass - and so we needed three amplifiers. However, one of them didn't work! We tried this and that but still couldn't identify the problem. The technicians came on stage and lent a hand too. They tried changing cables and whatever they could think of but nothing seemed to work. Fifteen minutes of trying later, we found out that one of the cables behind the amplifier was unplugged. Hrm. It looked kinda suspicious, though. I mean, who would unplug the cable at the back of the amp? The previous band was just using it just fine! Hmm...

Anyways, everything's settled, we began our very first performance as a band.

Here's the video!


Check out the 'romantic moment' right after the bridge of the song =P

I must say that we did not do badly, but we could have done a little better. Hehe.. Don't tell anyone, but there were some slight mistakes during our performance! A little jump in tempo here and there and minor stuff like that lar. It's our very first time performing live so cut us some slack okay?

But it felt great! Really felt as though we were giving a concert instead of competing in a battle of the bands (of sorts) =P

After our performance, the audience submitted their votes on who they think should win the Swinburne Night Performance thing. While the votes are being counted, the names of the Swin Prince and Princess was announced. Swin Prince was Paul a.k.a Ah Ho and Swin Princess was given to a girl whose name I couldn't catch. Oh, and because I was too excited, I forgot to take pictures of the Swin Prince and Princess =P

But the highlight was what follows after that: the announcement of the winning performance! The wait was almost unbearable~ Aaa~! It was even more killing that the emcee took his time to announce the results!

"The second best performance goes to... Farah and Dale!"

*applause! applause!* The pair received RM100. Which is pretty good money, if you ask me ;)

"And the winning performance for tonight is... Hold on a second..."

Damn it. The suspense is killing me. Johnson looked at me and said, "Don't worry, even if we don't win, we'll still have tried our best." I was like, "Yeah, I know". Mulut saja cakap like that, but my heart was playing a drum solo at 300 beats per minute.

"And the winning performance is..."

Here it comes.

"...SILENT MODE!"

"Waaah~!!" That was our very first reaction! We shouted and jumped in delight before realizing that we have to go on stage to get the money. Too excited ma =P Really happy man! Felt like a celebrity when we posed for photographs on stage with so many cameras snapping away.

After what seemed like an eternity of a taste of heaven, we went off stage. The Student Council then gave a performance. As the theme of the night was 'It Starts Tonight', they gave it a fitting end by singing All-American Rejects' "It Ends Tonight". As the Council President a.k.a Ah Kai could barely reach the notes required for that song, they requested for Alda to help out by singing alongside Ah Kai. No surprise there; the song is extremely hard to sing! Download the song and try singing along with it and you will understand.

It ends tonight

The performance was followed by a 'closing ceremony', which is actually another performance by Hazard Minor and their shuffle moves. Same-o same-o.

The night ended with mass phototaking.

Remember her? She's Adeline, the ticket lady

Silent Mode